Stephanie Castanha, FMCG Recruitment Consultant at Hays, shares her thoughts on why the food and beverage industry is so popular. An expert in all aspects of FMCG food and beverage, including Grocery Multiples, Foodservice, HORECA, Cash and Carry and Wholesale, she'd be delighted to get in touch with anyone who has experience in FMCG and sales either by email (stephanie.castanha@hays.com ) or via the Sales Specialists UK LinkedIn group.

Saving money remains a top priority for shoppers, these days people are shopping less but with more purpose. However, according to the Food and Drink Business Confidence survey, consumer spending on food began to recover in Q1 2013, and according to global information and insights company Nielsen, European FMCG sales experienced an upturn. This is good news as the FMCG industry is key to achieving the Government's goals for economic growth, exports, employment, environmental sustainability and public health. It’s good news for the sales industry too: as consumer spending increases, food and beverage companies are expanding, leading to a range of challenging opportunities for motivated and ambitious professionals.

As food and beverage companies enjoy sales and business growth, they are also competing to ensure that their brand names are positioned in a positive light and are at the forefront of the market. In light of recent quality concerns within the food and beverage industry, Defra has launched a questionnaire to find out the public’s opinion on UK food supply. This really highlights how important customer opinion is to the market. It influences shopper behaviour, government goals and industry standards. Customers drive sales. It’s more important than ever for successful salespeople to understand their customers.

The food and beverage manufacturing industry is the single largest manufacturing sector in the UK, employing up to 400,000 people (Source: Food and Drink Federation). It’s a competitive, complex and challenging industry to work in, with a real focus on customer demand. As FMCG companies rise to the challenge of catering for busy working consumers with a variety of dietary and health needs, there are opportunities for sales people in a diverse range of roles within both large big-name companies and smaller niche organisations.

What’s more, it's not all about sales. You'll get the chance to work with business areas such as logistics, finance, marketing and more. For a salesperson, managing relationships with multiple manufacturers, retailers, customers and consumers is key. The scope for learning and development within FMCG food and beverage sales is huge.

Our consultants have in-depth knowledge of the FMCG sales jobs market, and help sales professionals across the UK to find jobs matching their skills and personalities. To find out more about how our highly-skilled consultants can support you, please visit our website.


Adam Horne, IT Sales and Managed Hosting Specialist Consultant at Hays, shares his thoughts on the development of the cloud industry. An expert in all aspects of technical sales, including the IT, managed cloud hosting and infrastructure markets, he would be happy to hear from anyone interested in this post by email (adam.horne@hays.com) or via the Sales Specialists UK LinkedIn group.

There have been some exciting developments within the cloud industry recently. The 2013 Future Of Cloud Computing survey by North Bridge Venture Partners and GigaOM Research has shown that cloud adoption is on the rise, as 75% of those surveyed reported the use of some sort of cloud platform. According to the survey, gaining greater business agility, scalability and cost are the three main drivers of cloud adoption.

The survey also showed that 45% are now using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas). Whilst Iaas is still a relatively new industry, this is good news for Google, as its highly-anticipated public IaaS cloud offering 'Google Compute Engine' (GCE) has just been released. The GCE boasts to be faster, more efficient and low-cost, but will need to develop its SLA if it wants to compete with Amazon’s offering: ‘Amazon Web Service’ (AWS).

Customers are queuing up for the cloud, not just due to reduced costs, but also for greater flexibility and knowledge options. Big Data has had a huge impact on cloud offerings recently; the ability to manage the vast amounts of data available in a more structured way is helping businesses to grow and develop. For example, cloud computing and Big Data technologies are at the heart of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative. Big data drives results, and in making such an impact, all that data has to be stored somewhere where it can be accessed on demand and in any location.

In addition, the growth of mobile devices is having an impact as people connect online, whilst on-the-go. With built-in GPS, location data works with the cloud to deliver targeted information to mobile users. Data analysis improvements, increased cloud-storage offerings and lower costs mean that Big Data is now available to more people.

What do you see as the next step for the cloud?

Hays Sales UK are experts in all areas of sales recruitment. To find out more about how our highly-skilled consultants can support you, please visit our website.


BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) is a growing market. According to HfS Research, the global BPO market is set to grow 5.1% in 2013. With a tough economy and fierce competition, organisations are increasingly turning to outsourcing in order to keep costs down. However, it's not all about cost reduction; HfS suggests that the primary motivations for outsourcing are to reduce operating costs, gain greater flexibility and scale, and to standardise processes (Source: Outsourcing to surge in 2013: study).

A strong IT infrastructure is important to any business, and technology is fast becoming the back-bone of BPO offerings. It is critical to remember the relationship between IT and BPO, not just for reducing costs but also to add value and allow a business to become more effective. A recent report from Accenture has shown that high-performance BPO uses technology as a source of innovation. By allowing itself to integrate and develop, the IT industry is, in itself, growing. According to Adzuna, the IT industry had the highest employment growth in the six months from November 2012 to May 2013.

Other developing technologies, such as cloud computing, will help to drive future BPO improvement and innovation. Customers are beginning to expect BPO suppliers to integrate with cloud-based management systems. As BPO and IT continue to gain momentum together, customers are becoming more knowledgeable and more selective about outsourcing. BPO providers need to target their prospects more narrowly in order to maximise the chances of success.

BPO is driving IT in a new direction; allowing businesses to expand whilst reducing spend. It offers a range of growth and development opportunities for salespeople who have a strategic selling approach. BPO sales are won by thought-leaders with great problem-solving skills, who can go into an organisation and really understand their business processes.

Flexibility is becoming a higher priority and by moulding IT, cloud and BPO into flexible, combined packages, salespeople can deliver more strategic and useful solutions to customers in order to drive their businesses forward. Comparable to Solution Sales, BPO salespeople need to be able to understand the customer pain points and use their expertise to advise accordingly, offering joined-up solutions that include elements of IT, BPO and cloud.

Outsourcing is an interesting business, with a vast array of industries to sell into. If you're looking for an opportunity within BPO please visit our website.


Understanding your sales team and what motivates them to sell, succeed and develop, is a key challenge for all Sales Managers.

Some people find the level of supervision they are given, their status within the company, or their relationships with supervisors and peers are vital to their enjoyment of work. Things like company policies, working conditions and job security do make a difference to a person’s job satisfaction, and should certainly be considered when trying to create a happy, harmonious working environment. However, they are more like environmental factors rather than motivators to work hard and succeed.

The main factors to focus on for motivation are:

  • The work itself: People will be motivated to do the work if they perceive it to be significant. If you feel your job is worthwhile, you’ll be more likely to approach it with enthusiasm.
  • Achievement: People love nothing more than a sense of achievement, to feel they’ve done well and succeeded. Giving your team specific and measurable goals to work towards will help to accomplish this.
  • Recognition: Make sure you recognise whenever someone does well, achieves their goal or wins a tough sale. Publicise it to the rest of the team or office. A little recognition for a task well done goes a long way.
  • Responsibility: Increasing a person’s responsibility or importance is a great way to motivate them. Put people in charge of small teams or projects and they will run with them with enthusiasm. Keep an eye on anyone you’ve given more responsibility to, as it will almost certainly lead to…
  • … Advancement: Getting a promotion is a big motivator for a lot of people. Offering someone the chance to step up in their career is both important to the individual and crucial to enabling business growth.
  • Growth: According to Salesforce, over 50% of sales managers are too busy to train and develop their sales teams. You must make time for personal and business development, it’s vital to the success of the business.
And the bonus factor: Salary.
This is a tricky one. Many people think that salary, bonuses and commission are motivators. But they are actually more usually seen as factors for job dissatisfaction. People usually strive for higher salaries because they are unhappy with the one they already have, not because they desire to achieve a certain salary which defines success. But undoubtedly, there are some people out there who say they are motivated by money. Whilst a competitive commission or bonus scheme can help in the short-term, try to find something else to motivate these individuals which has a more long-term gain.

The truth is, everyone is motivated by different things; some people place recognition and achievement at the top of their priority list, whilst others are more driven by money. It's important to find out what works best for the individuals in your sales team, as well as what they want from their job or career, and find ways to motivate them accordingly.

Hays Sales UK are experts in all areas of sales recruitment. To find out more about how our highly-skilled consultants can support you, please visit our website.


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